Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean eBook

as, in rowing round the berg, they found it perpendicular
in every place but one. When they had ascended
to the top, which was perfectly flat, they discovered
a white bear in quiet possession of the mass, who
plunged into the sea without hesitation, and effected
his escape. The party found the ice berg to be
four thousand one hundred and sixty-nine yards long,
three thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine yards
broad, and fifty-one feet high, being aground in sixty-one
fathoms. Its appearance was like that of the back
of the Isle of Wight, and the cliffs resembled those
of the chalk range to the west of Dover. The
weight of this mass was calculated to amount to one
billion two hundred and ninety two millions three hundred
and ninety seven thousand six hundred and seventy-three
tons.

[Illustration: A whitebear.]

An ice berg examined by Captain Graah, on the east
coast of Greenland, rose one hundred and twenty feet
out of the water, had a circumference of four thousand
feet at the base, and its solid contents were estimated
to be upwards of nine hundred millions of cubic feet.
When viewed at a distance, nothing can be more interesting
than the appearance of a considerable number of these
formations, exhibiting an infinite variety of shape,
and requiring no stretch of imagination to convert
them into a series of floating towers, castles, churches,
obelisks, and pyramids, or a snowy range of Alpine
heights. No pencil, an observer has remarked,
has ever given any thing like the true effect of an
ice berg. In a picture they are huge, uncouth
masses, stuck in the sea; while their chief beauty
and grandeur—­their slow stately motion,
the whirling of the snow about their summits, and
the fearful crackling of their parts—­they
cannot give. The ice of the bergs is compact and
solid, or of a fine green tint verging to blue; and
large pieces may be frequently obtained, equal to
the most beautiful crystal in transparency. It
is stated by Scoresby, that with a portion of this
ice, of by no means regular convexity, used as a burning
lens, he has frequently burnt wood, fired gunpowder,
melted lead, and lit the sailors’ pipes, to their
no small astonishment, the ice itself remaining in
the mean while perfectly fixed and pellucid.

MASSACRE OF THE CREW OF THE ATAHUALPA.

The Atahualpa, of Boston, left that port in August,
1803, bound to the north-west coast of America, for
the purpose of trading with the natives. She
arrived on the coast in the month of January, 1804;
and, after visiting the several islands, and purchasing
skins, on the 5th of June, 1805, weighed anchor from
Chockokee, on the north-west coast, and made sail.
On the 8th, arrived at Millbank sound, and came to
an anchor within musket-shot of the village.
Soon after her arrival, the chief of the Indians,
by the name of Keite, came off to the ship, with some
of his tribe, and informed the captain that the Caroline,
Captain Sturgess, had sailed from thence ten days
before.